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Letter to Jack and Charmian London from Cordi Webb Ingram, dated March 15, 1913

AD QM IQj
Ro.cton, Lamar Co., Texas, M'ch. I5.£/fl
My dear Mr. London:- Here is the stuff that I nave had the audacity
to ask you to read and pass judgment upon. I feel confident that you
will handle it unflinchingly and tell me unvarnished facts as you see
them, but permit me to offer you free license to mutilate, lacerate,
amputate, or graft, if you feel so disposed and should there be the
faintest ray of hope of saving the patient.
I know you have little time to give to such stuff as this and I
feel like an intruder. I'll offer no excuse for doing what my conscience whispers is not courteous, for it would limp too perceptibly.
Will you tell me if you deem the MS worth the expense of being
exhaustively criticized by ti.ie Editor literary Bureau and re-writing?
Do you discover any symptoms of literary ability in the malady inclose!
and would you advise landscape gardening, plain cooking or sewing, or
preparation for a missionary career to one so afflicted? Do the symptoms give signs of any alarming complications setting up?
I've recently finished a re—reading of "Tiie Sea-Wolf" and my effort looks so flat and tame since the reading, that I have hesitated
about sending it at all. I have actually had the grim bull-dog tenacity to write two more full grown book-si&e MSS since the germ infected
my brain-cells and should there be anything in any of my efforts to #jk
commend them, the other two may be better than trie one sent to try
your patience, however, I rather like this best. You see, for more thai
sixteen years, to quote Jo In "Little Women", I've "oeen "pegging away"
at writing and everything I've put my hand to has been gone over times
without number. Why, long before Dixon had "The Sins of The Parents"
published, my inclosed story had grown musty in my trunk and had been
typed twice, owing to revision, such as I was capable of giving.
I have about completed a third going over of a simple story of
the South which has the enticing(?) title of "A Drab-colored Bird";
now, it's "simplicity" might appeal to you more than the airy attempts
at high-soaring flights in tragedy in the inclosed burden.
I nappen to be a victim of pre-natal influence - no, not a moral
imbecile nor derelict, if you please- but I have the most ungovernable
temper on earth, and I know it to be due solely to pre-natal influence and it has borne upon my mind until I was impelled to attempt
the inclosed.
While reading this, 'will you take the liberty of using your pencil unsparingly, striking out the superfluous (even tho' it calls for
a black line thro' the entire story), add anything that you deem necessary to make the nude offspring respectable, and tho' you deem it best
Tor me to treat me■as cruelly as Wolf Larsen did Hump that I may be a-
ble, sometime to stand on my own legs (I was a struggling school-teacher for fifteen consecutive years and my finances never needed an agent,
you may be sure), will you pummel my ambition until it is unrecognizable by the one who conceived it- if it is all best for me?
I have no hankering for short stories but whenever I nave a
fever to write, I want to stretch my say over pages and pages- I may
be imbued with a fiendish desire to tax the endurance of my fellow-men^
I do not know- but nothing short of a book-sized essay will express
what I want to say.
Have read the first installment of the "Valley of the "Toon" and
it increased my admiration for JACK LONDON, cvS everything about him or
by him always does. Even a magazine article about JACK LONDON is a
veritable treasure trove to me. I'm a heathen anyway; my God is a
conglomerate mass of gods, for I am a hero-worshipper.

AD QM IQj
Ro.cton, Lamar Co., Texas, M'ch. I5.£/fl
My dear Mr. London:- Here is the stuff that I nave had the audacity
to ask you to read and pass judgment upon. I feel confident that you
will handle it unflinchingly and tell me unvarnished facts as you see
them, but permit me to offer you free license to mutilate, lacerate,
amputate, or graft, if you feel so disposed and should there be the
faintest ray of hope of saving the patient.
I know you have little time to give to such stuff as this and I
feel like an intruder. I'll offer no excuse for doing what my conscience whispers is not courteous, for it would limp too perceptibly.
Will you tell me if you deem the MS worth the expense of being
exhaustively criticized by ti.ie Editor literary Bureau and re-writing?
Do you discover any symptoms of literary ability in the malady inclose!
and would you advise landscape gardening, plain cooking or sewing, or
preparation for a missionary career to one so afflicted? Do the symptoms give signs of any alarming complications setting up?
I've recently finished a re—reading of "Tiie Sea-Wolf" and my effort looks so flat and tame since the reading, that I have hesitated
about sending it at all. I have actually had the grim bull-dog tenacity to write two more full grown book-si&e MSS since the germ infected
my brain-cells and should there be anything in any of my efforts to #jk
commend them, the other two may be better than trie one sent to try
your patience, however, I rather like this best. You see, for more thai
sixteen years, to quote Jo In "Little Women", I've "oeen "pegging away"
at writing and everything I've put my hand to has been gone over times
without number. Why, long before Dixon had "The Sins of The Parents"
published, my inclosed story had grown musty in my trunk and had been
typed twice, owing to revision, such as I was capable of giving.
I have about completed a third going over of a simple story of
the South which has the enticing(?) title of "A Drab-colored Bird";
now, it's "simplicity" might appeal to you more than the airy attempts
at high-soaring flights in tragedy in the inclosed burden.
I nappen to be a victim of pre-natal influence - no, not a moral
imbecile nor derelict, if you please- but I have the most ungovernable
temper on earth, and I know it to be due solely to pre-natal influence and it has borne upon my mind until I was impelled to attempt
the inclosed.
While reading this, 'will you take the liberty of using your pencil unsparingly, striking out the superfluous (even tho' it calls for
a black line thro' the entire story), add anything that you deem necessary to make the nude offspring respectable, and tho' you deem it best
Tor me to treat me■as cruelly as Wolf Larsen did Hump that I may be a-
ble, sometime to stand on my own legs (I was a struggling school-teacher for fifteen consecutive years and my finances never needed an agent,
you may be sure), will you pummel my ambition until it is unrecognizable by the one who conceived it- if it is all best for me?
I have no hankering for short stories but whenever I nave a
fever to write, I want to stretch my say over pages and pages- I may
be imbued with a fiendish desire to tax the endurance of my fellow-men^
I do not know- but nothing short of a book-sized essay will express
what I want to say.
Have read the first installment of the "Valley of the "Toon" and
it increased my admiration for JACK LONDON, cvS everything about him or
by him always does. Even a magazine article about JACK LONDON is a
veritable treasure trove to me. I'm a heathen anyway; my God is a
conglomerate mass of gods, for I am a hero-worshipper.